The Week Ahead

The Setup

The desk enters the week in a Stagflationary Pressure regime — an economy fighting sticky inflation and slowing growth at the same time — that has replaced the disinflationary expansion we carried through midsummer. The classification is transitional, not yet fully confirmed, but the drivers are hardening: crude oil held near the mid-$80s into Friday, long-term interest rates refused to ease, and hard assets kept bidding. Three convergence calls define the posture — a persistent hard-asset (gold, silver, Bitcoin) debasement bid, mega-cap technology leadership on pause, and an energy tail from the Strait of Hormuz standoff that is now the regime's engine. The week is shaped around two catalysts: Nvidia's earnings Wednesday after the close, and the Jackson Hole symposium (Aug 27–29), where new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first keynote Friday.

Equities

In equities, the split between what is leading and what is lagging tells the regime story. We are watching $NVDA at $214.72, holding just above its 50-day moving average of $207.58 (the average price over the last 50 trading days, a common gauge of the medium-term trend). The chip leader lagged Friday's broad bounce and reports Wednesday after the bell, with the Street modeling roughly $91 billion in revenue — the single largest test of whether AI-infrastructure demand can reassert leadership while the macro backdrop pulls capital elsewhere. That "elsewhere" is visible in $GLD at $423.36, sitting in record territory with a 14-day RSI of 71 — RSI is a momentum gauge, and a reading above 70 flags an asset as overbought, or stretched after a fast run. In a stagflation regime, the pattern is textbook: the gold proxy leads while the growth engine waits.

Crypto & Digital Assets

Bitcoin carries the weekend's only live read. $BTC trades near $77,661, up modestly on the day after finding footing at the weekend low around $75,900, though still shy of Friday's $78,410 close — the level worth tracking as the week opens. The catalyst to watch is legislative: the CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill that would split oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC, stalled before the Senate's August recess, with a procedural vote (the step that decides whether the bill can even reach the floor) now set for September 15. Under the surface, institutional demand held firm — Bitcoin ETFs (funds that let people own Bitcoin through a regular brokerage account) logged their best week since April, and $IBIT closed Friday up 6.0%.

Single-Family Real Estate

Single-family housing stays frozen at the seams. The 30-year fixed mortgage sits in the mid-6% range near 6.62%, and existing-home sales slipped 1.7% month-over-month in July as the median price pushed to $431,400 on a 4.6-month supply of homes for sale. Buyers are quietly gaining negotiating power as more listings hit the market, but the affordability math will not break open until long-term rates ease. The stagflation regime is the obstacle: as long as oil stays firm and the long end of the bond market holds, the mortgage relief that would unlock volume stays out of reach.

The Convergence Read

The strongest convergence across the desk stack points the same direction the tape already leans. JPM targets gold at $6,000–6,300 by year-end, an explicit debasement call. MS BEAT stays overweight (a larger-than-normal position) U.S. small- and mid-cap stocks and underweight (smaller-than-normal) large-cap — the same rotation away from mega-cap concentration our regime read flagged. Two independent desks, one message: position for hard assets and broadening leadership, not for a return to the narrow tech trade that led the last cycle. ⚡

Educational content. Not financial advice. PM Capital Group provides market intelligence and financial education.